Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) grilled Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis today about why a proposed rule to effectively eliminate current regulations that exempt “companionship services” and “live-in domestic services” from overtime requirements was created without even consulting “a single state’s Medicare director.”

Solis testified before the Senate Appropriations Committee’s Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, and Related Agencies on her department’s FY 2013 budget request.

This includes an “investment” to combat employee misclassification. “When workers are misclassified as independent contractors, they are deprived of benefits and protections to which they are legally entitled, such as overtime and unemployment benefits,” Solis said.

Alexander brought up a situation where seniors hire someone to live in their home or visit regularly and help them with day-to-day tasks. Eliminating the current overtime regulation exemption for these companion workers, the senator said, would mean less care for seniors and pushing them from their homes into more expensive facilities such as nursing homes in greater numbers.

“I’m concerned that the department hasn’t sufficiently evaluated the impact of the rule on seniors who need care, on people who want jobs, and on Medicaid costs in states,” he said.

Solis responded that the exemption was originally established more for services like baby-sitting instead of in-home healthcare. She added that most of the workers are women who are having a hard time making ends meet.

“Well, if you put them out of work… they’ll really have a hard time making ends meet,” Alexander said.

“I think that one of the things that we’re attempting to do here is level the playing field because you do have some good providers, some good folks that are playing by the rules and allowing for that,” Solis said.

Alexander pointed out that there currently are no rules — it’s the Labor Department that wants to put them there.

Full video worth watching:

Bridget Johnson is a veteran journalist whose news articles and opinion columns have run in dozens of news outlets across the globe. Bridget first came to Washington to be online editor at The Hill, where she wrote The World from The Hill column on foreign policy. Previously she was an opinion writer and editorial board member at the Rocky Mountain News and nation/world news columnist at the Los Angeles Daily News.
She is an NPR contributor and has contributed to USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, National Review Online, Politico and more, and has myriad television and radio credits as a commentator. Bridget is Washington Editor for PJ Media.

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1.
Marc Malone

He’s been at this game a long time. His pointed rebuttals were devastating. She was thoroughly outclassed. Of course, that is to be expected with every Obama administration person. Repubs will eat their lunch every time when they are discussing realities, and not dealing with political sideshows.

It just goes to show, that even RINO’s can do some good… when they are not busy pushing for more government.

She’s displaying classic utopianism. “We are from the government and we’re here to help you. If you will just stop resisting us, we will make your life perfect. Now here’s your number. Now get in line and shut up,” She explained.

I know several in home care workers. They are hard working, diligent and most of all care about the people whom they care for. This is a job that is an “at will employment” situation. Most of the time the families of these elderly do not have the resources to afford expensive RN’s and contracts through care provider companies. Therefore they seek “community care” which is these free lance caregivers who for the most part have gone through CNA training.

If the government starts applying arbitrary rules to the situation then these families will have no choice but to institutionalize a loved one because the cost to care ratio will even out at that point. This puts an extreme amount of guilt on the adult child who has to decide how best to get the 24/7 care their elder relatives or special needs child requires.

This will also put alot of people who have trained to do this job out of a job. The institutions these people will end up in will not make the care better or more fair for the caregiver. The money in these places first goes to overhead and executive pay, then the patient. Most of the time these facilities have one care giver for every 14 patients. Try taking care of 14 babies and toddlers at once! That is essentially what you would be asking. It will hurt everyone all the way around and the only ones who will benefit will be the government run institions and the executives that run them.

What Solis is proposing is like almost all of the rules and regulations that have been imposed on anything and everything. The legislators never consider the consequences of their “We’re only trying to help you” legislation. Look at Obamacare and all of the mischief it has caused as well as the harm it will do once implemented. Just like when they raise taxes on the rich, the rich will find a way to pay even less than before. Remember the tax on luxury yachts? That’s right it almost put an entire industry out of business. Minimum wage? All studies show that businesses hire less when the minimum wage is raised. Does that matter to a Demorat? Hell no, because it is the GOOD INTENTIONS that count.

A member of my family is involved with in-home healthcare. To bring it under federal regulation for overtime, etc., is the most ludicrous idea ever. The federal government, especially under Obama, believes that every service provided under any circumstances or conditions must be regulated to protect someone, anyone who could be another voter in their camp.

The family member is a self-employed individual who can work when she wants to and set her own hours as a general rule. She has a flat fee with no rules for overtime unless it is agreed upon up front and the conditions established for overtime.

It is going to get even worse if Obama is reelected and if Republicans don’t get off their duff and campaign like hell for the house and senate. If we don’t get the White House back, we should concentrate on gaining in congress and keeping Obama at bay.

The essence of this is making home care providers into employees rather than contractors so that they can be unionized. Only “employees” are covered by the Labor Management Relations Act, not contractors. If USDOL concludes that these workers are employees for purposes of the Act, they can be made union. As was discussed in the recent article on unionized homecare workers in CA, MI, and a few other states, these people will never get an election to decide whether they wish to be union; the unions, SEIU and AFSCME are the most agressive on this, will just make a deal with a governor or legislature that they’ll recognize the union as the representative of all homecare workers, “negotiate” a contract, which will, of course, have a union security clause with compelled dues, and many more millions of dollars will go to Democrats.

Even those of you in Right to Work states aren’t immune; once they’re designated employees, the US just makes that status a condition of a government receiving and disbursing Medicare/Medicaid funds, so you might find your blue cities doing union recognition deals even though state law would prevent them from officially having union shops with compelled dues

What this will primarily do is suck money that should have gone to actual recipient care into unionized caregivers’ wages and union dues. Just another Democrat money laundry for taking taxpayer money and giving it to Democrats.

I hit “Submit” too soon. Then the next game after they get a determination that these are really employees and should have been all along is to go after any companies that provide these services for back overtime. They worked this filthy game to perfection all during the Clinton administration, when public employees had been placed under the Fair Labor Standards Act by the USSC in Garcia v. San Antonio in ’86. By the ’90s, the unions and scumbag employment lawyers were high-jacking goverments for billions of dollars in back overtime pay to all sorts of employees that had previously been considered salaried.

Where unions were involved the union would just call their Clinton Administration friends in the USDOL and make a complaint. USDOL would take a cursory look around and conclude that the employer had willfully misclassified people as OT exempt. The rules are that the employees naked assertion of having worked the hours creates a rebuttable presumption, but since most employers did not keep time records on salaried employees, the employer could not not rebut the presumption that the employee had worked the claimed hours.

In Democrat controlled governments, this was just an outright feeding frenzy and whenever USDOL presented a consent judgement, the government just said “where do we sign” and billions flowed to unionized employees. This is an ongoing liability once they’re determined to be OT eligible; this is how so many union states suddenly found their cops, firemen, and correctional officers making $100K and more a year. My State had a Democrat governor but a Republican Legislature (that I was working for much of the Clinton days) and if the Governor needed an appropriation to pay for the “settlements,” he had to go say “may I” to the Legislature, and we gave him one Hell of a hard time over it. The State fought a lot of claims and saved a good bit of money but we still turned over millions in OT claims that we knew were fraudulent but couldn’t disprove under the rules USDOL established.

It is unlikely they’ll go after individual employers of homecare workers because there isn’t enough money but any company big enough to have two dimes to rub together will be fair game. So, the Obamunists aren’t pushing Granny over the cliff, they’re just robbing her as she sits in her wheelchair.

I think that Senator Lemar Alexander did an excellent job in illustrating how regulations (in this case a proposed change) without proper research can lead to devastating unintentional consequences. For example, in 1993 in the LA legilature, she voted for a civil code change to allow for referral agencies tobill the client , pay the worker, issue 1099s and yet “transfer employer ” reponsibilities to the client. Thanks to her and to other well meaning (they were doing a favor for a lobbyist) have created a huge underground/ grey market economy in CA, where there are two sets of housekeeper, home care agencies, tree trimming, lawn and pool services. The traditional agency- known as the “third party” agency will be destroyed by her very pointed attack on “third party ” agencies and the referral agencies that look identical but are actually giving the client the liability. In the meantime, thanks to the referral model, the worker is denied the benefits of workers compensation, unemployment, state disability, Medicare and social security entitlements. The state and federal income tax revenues are lost because there is no payroll tax payments made. The worker can not save up the monies to pay income taxes on the 1099s issued and their future “employment” earnings are garnished sending them deeper into the “underground economy”. Ms. Solis would like to see more job opportunities for the undocmented worker- but instead of moving a whole industry into the grey market- it would be better if she help create a “guest worker” program for these women. While most of the workers that come to us from the underground economy- are not undocumented but the very existence of thousands of agencies that operate without the benefit of “employing” their workers keeps reducing their options. And when they do seek employment with tradional “third party” agencies, the tax garnishments start coming as soon as the govrnment links the tax reporting we do to them. And once again, they have to return to the underground economy.
Solis and others have exploited the scenarios,claiming that there are live-ins in CA working for $35 a day- yes unfortunately there are- for private families who do not honor any wage and hour regulations – not for “third party” agencies that follow the existing rules. This issue is a SEIU attack on “third party” agencies- one only has to go on their web site to see the “organizing campaign”. Solis is not being “intellectually honest”, whe is doing the bidding of her largest funder.The agencies in CA at least are competing every day with agencies that are not paying the payroll taxes nor the workers compensation nor have to comply with any wage and hour (since they have no employer obligations). Maybe, Solis who helped create the referral model that issues 1099s, should work on fixing the issue.
My next question is, why doesn’t Senator LEmar Alexander run for President- even as a life long Democrat- I would vote for him in a heartbeat.